Minister promises to ensure passage of Affirmative Action Bill
The Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection (MOGCSP), Lariba Zuweira Abudu, has given her assurance to ensure the Affirmative Action (Gender Equality) Bill is passed into law before she exits office.
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To this end, she has started consultations and discussions with colleague Cabinet ministers and relevant stakeholders to ensure that she achieves that vision.
The Director of Gender at the MOGCSP, Faustina Acheampong, who disclosed this at a roundtable discussion organised by the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), said consequent to that vision, the bill was in March last month submitted to cabinet and had since been shared among cabinet members for their attention and further consideration.
“According to the minister, she is going to move every means to ensure that the submission of the bill in her era to Cabinet will be the last.
What we are now pushing with cabinet secretariat is for them to table the bill for discussion at their next cabinet meeting.
She will make sure that it is tabled and moved from Cabinet to Parliament,” Mrs Acheampong disclosed.
The roundtable discussion, which was organised in collaboration with the Global Center for Pluralism and the Affirmative Action Bill Coalition, was on strengthening pluralism and inclusion of women for inclusive development: the urgent need for the passage of the Affirmative Action Bill into Law, and it was attended by some members of civil society organisations.
Roadmap
Mrs Acheampong, who was speaking on the current status of the bill and efforts by the MOGCSP said, at the ministry level, said a committee had been formed on the bill and they had since come up with a road map.
The roadmap, she disclosed included, a planned meeting with the Chief of Staff and the leadership of Parliament so that they would be aware of the bill’s content and defend it when it was brought before them.
She said it was also their plan to meet with the women’s caucus in Parliament; Parliamentary Select Committee on Gender, Children and Social Protection and the Parliamentary Select Committee on Legal and Parliamentary Affairs.
“We also want to have meetings with non-governmental organisations and CSOs which are our mouthpiece in pushing this agenda.
We want to update them on the bill so that at any point in time when they go out, they can do the advocacy on it.
We are very certain that this year, based on the move the current minister is taking, the bill will move from Cabinet,” she said.
Women political representation
Speaking on poor political representation of women through zoom, a senior lecturer at the Department of Management and Human Resources, Ghana Technology University College (GTUC), Dr Esi Akyere Mensah, said because women were in the minority and most parliamentarians were men, the bill would struggle to pass because it might not be a priority for the men.
She said if the bill was to pass within the current dispensation, then there would be a need to get men champions in addition to the women advocates in Parliament.
“Advocacy from a multi-layered perspective and approach will be needed.
We must win over the national psyche to get the bill to pass,” she stressed.
For her part, the Convener, Affirmative Action Bill Coalition and Legal Practitioner, Sheila Minkah-Premo, said the country had not gone far in its democracy due to the exclusion of women from governance and decision making positions, adding that, inclusive growth was needed.
“Women are discriminated against in governance and decision making positions.
The Affirmative Action Bill is aimed at enacting a gender equality law which will ensure inclusion”.
She said research had shown that there was gender imbalance in several spheres of life in the country, adding that women formed over 50 per cent of the country’s population yet the ratio of women in Parliament and the district assemblies was low.